Monday, September 2, 2013

Space Templars

Inspired by my recent
exposure to Castle DeathI decided to run an experiment.

Like Dungeon World, task resolution (including combat) will be handled with 2D6s:

RollResult

10-12 Complete
success!

7-9 Marginal
success.

2-6 Failure.

This is a very free-form system, as the DM needs to
interpret the results depending on context. We’ll see how I do.

I decided to use a sci-fi setting for my experiment. Ten
thousand years in the future, an organization of warrior monks called the
Templars (basically a rip-off of Jedis) helps to keep the peace. I have a rough
map of the galaxy that I sketched out a few months ago (more on that later)

Track a princess located in a temple while dealing with a
computer failure while opposed by a starship.

OK, that last part was a little weird, so I changed it to a
religious figure. Inspired by Tales ofthe Space Princess, I decided to turn the adventure into a sci fi dungeon crawl. Now I have a
space princess held captive by a cult leader in an ancient temple. The heroes
need to make their way through the temple to rescue the princess.

I thought about drawing up a map of the temple and then
populating with random encounters, but then I decided to simplify a bit and
assume a linear progression. There will be four main sections – travel through
a jungle to the temple, the temple, the crypts underneath the temple (where the
princess and the cult leader are), and the escape. Encounters during the first
3 sections will be random, according to this chart:

Roll

Jungle

Temple

Crypts

1

A trap

A trap

A trap

2

Carnivorous plant

Worshipers

Cultist guards

3

Deadly predator

Cultist guards

The living dead

4

Cultist guards

Sacrifices

Hell hounds

5

Lost!

Cultist guards

A puzzle

6

A boon

A boon

Mercenaries

7

Move to next section

Move to next section

The villain’s lair

Each turn, I will roll to
determine an encounter or challenge. If the challenge is overcome, roll again
but with a +1 modifier (cumulative for each challenge in the section). A roll
of 7+ will take the heroes to the next section or the final boss.